A/N: You might want to keep tissues handy.
Wei WuXian steadied one shaking hand with the other as he polished the memorial tiles in the Hall of Ancestors in Lotus Pier. Jiang FengMian. Madame Yu. Jiang YanLi. Wen Qing. And the newest one, Jiang WanYin. He had traveled there from Sanctuary almost a year before for his Shidi's funeral, and never left. The milder climate suited his aging bones much better than Sanctuary. A light snore caught his attention, set butterflies flying in his stomach; Lan WangJi lay asleep on one of the two divans placed inside the Hall for the two elders to rest on during their daily visits. After over sixty years of marriage, their days of intimacy were long over, but the butterflies remained.
Wen Ning, as youthful as he had been eighty years before, knelt at his Master's side. "Master Wei, do you need anything? Shall I bring you to a more sunny spot? You look cold…."
Wei WuXian shook his head, "No, but I'm glad you're here." He struggled for a bit, but eventually managed to remove four objects from his sleeve. "For you and Song Lan," he said, handing over two identical tassels with little silver bells. "The clappers in here are pills. For when you're ready."
"Ready for what, Master?"
"When you're tired of being alone. When you're tired of watching everyone you love die." Wen Ning ducked his head in understanding. Wei WuXian handed over two jade tokens, one with a lotus flower inscribed on its front, the other with a cloud. "But until that day comes, you may use these if you wish. But only if you wish. I am not commanding you. Or even asking you. They'll let you know if Lan Zhan or I are reborn. And where we are." A tear slipped down Wei WuXian's face. "I wish I had made one for you so you could find your sister…. I need living bodies, though…."
"It's all right, Master Wei," Wen Ning tried to placate the elder, but Wei WuXian had already fallen asleep. If the younger man could cry, he would have. Plenty of cultivators who were not as strong as HanGuang-Jun or the Yiling Patriarch were able to extend their lives well into their second or even third century; these two men had long ago decided to allow nature to take its course. It was heartbreaking to see ZeWu-Jun and Madame Li walking around as sprightly as they had at fifty and sixty while his masters needed assistance to walk and fell asleep sometimes mid-sentence. Wen Ning felt for Wei WuXian's pulse; the yellowing, waxy, papery-thin skin and the fragile bones almost felt repulsive to the touch.
"Master Ning, is Waizufu all right?" Lan YongAi knelt on Wei WuXian's other side. She wasn't his eldest granddaughter, but she was the one closest to his heart as her father was Lan WangJi's natural son and her mother was Wei WuXian's natural daughter. There had been many strange looks given to her parents when they decided to wed, seeing as how they had been raised as siblings. However, since they had no blood relationship, they weren't breaking any taboos. At fifteen, she had left Sanctuary to study medicine with the QishanWen under her uncle Lan SiZhui. And now at almost thirty, she had moved to Lotus Pier to be with her affianced husband, Jiang WanYin's younger grandson.
"He's fine. Just sleeping," Wen Ning reassured. Together they arranged Wei WuXian's body on his divan, and covered him with a light blanket to ward off the chill of the Hall. Wen Ning tied the two tassels to his belt, and hid the other devices in his sleeve. "I think you should tell your parents and the rest of the family it's time to come to Lotus Pier." There were twenty-two children to be told and almost four times as many grandchildren. And more than a few great-grandchildren. And even a great-great grandchild. Wei WuXian had had six children with his concubine: three boys and three girls. Lan WangJi had five: four girls and a boy. The youngest of the adopted children was only a few years younger than Lan YongAi….
"Are you sure, Uncle Ning?"
The older man nodded. The child had probably not received an invitation to the memorial service for Jin ZiXuan and Jiang YanLi. And even if she had, she probably didn't immediately understand what this week meant to her grandfathers. She was a healer, focused on saving lives; she might not even understand the importance of the pills hidden in the tassels. And given the way she angrily stomped away from the Hall, she probably didn't understand why her grandfathers chose to not extend their lives…. She was barely more than a child! How could she possibly understand why a person would decide to lay down his tools for the next generations to pick up?
A few days later, Wei WuXian awoke in the Hall of Ancestors from yet another nap; dusk was setting in and there was a strange woman kneeling on the prayer mats. She helped him in his struggle to sit up. She had a kind but stern face, and her hair was silver with only a few scattered black streaks in it. "Thank you," he whispered, voice still husky from sleep.
"There's no need to thank me, Elder Wei."
He laughed and patted her hand where it still rested on his knee. "Please don't call me Elder, Meimei. You make me feel older than I already am."
She smiled back. "And Meimei makes me feel younger than I am. Most people here call me LaoNiang."
Wei WuXian smiled. "And how many grandchildren do you have LaoNiang? I've lost count of mine…."
"If you mean biological grandchildren, then I have none. I never married. I was too busy learning and teaching to think about men and babies. One of my students had a child, though…. I sometimes used to think of him as my grandson. Though the first few times when he needed me, I kept away."
Wei WuXian's eyes drifted closed. "I could never have kept away from my family when they needed me."
"You were a much better parent than I could ever have dreamed of being. I was angry at the one I treated as my daughter. She left me to find her own path to enlightenment, and when she died and left behind a child, I left him alone. Maybe I was punishing him for his mother's choices."
Wei WuXian opened one watery eye. "You punished a child for the so-called mistakes of his mother? I will never understand that logic."
LaoNiang seated herself besides Wei WuXian. "I sometimes wondered if I was wrong."
The watery eye closed against a tear. Whether it was from wanting to feel rage or sadness he didn't know. And didn't particularly care anymore. The past was the past and nothing would change it. What good did a half-baked acknowledgement of guilt do almost a century later? "BaoShan SanRen…." he guessed.
"Yes."
"Why have you come? Has it really taken you this long to…? Don't answer that. I forgive you. I applaud your actions. If you had taken me to your mountain, I would never have met Lan Zhan. His love is worth more than all the misfortunes in my life."
"I watched you while you slept."
"That's all I seem to do these days…."
"After you fell. I was at the Nightless City that night. I felt I owed it to Cangse Sanren… if I wouldn't be there for you in life, I could at least be there for her at your death. I was the first one at your side…. You were gasping for breath; you looked to be in so much pain…. So I held you, tried to give you some comfort in what I thought would be your last hour."
"You shouldn't have bothered."
"Jin GuangYao hired me to be your caretaker once he saw you were still alive. I thought taking care of you might be an appropriate penance just in case I was wrong to leave you alone after her death... Was it enough? I gave books and money to your disciples in Yiling, too."
"So you're the one…. Penance only works for those who admit to themselves they are guilty. You don't sound like a guilty person…."
"I was never really sure if I was guilty…. I never felt guilty…. Sometimes I felt like I should, though…. How can you say you forgive me? I have always thought you would think I had abandoned you."
Wei WuXian looked thoughtfully at his mother's grandmaster, this woman he had once been desperate to call his own. "Because you abandoned me, I had a home in Lotus Pier. I had a father and a brother and sister whom I adored and who loved me back. Because you abandoned me, when the rest of the world abandoned me, too, I was prepared for it. And I mostly survived it. Because you abandoned me, I met Lan Zhan and fell in love with the most amazing man. With him at my side, we changed the apparent fates of hundreds of orphaned children. We took them off the streets and away from poverty and gave them permanent homes and people to love. Together we raised our own children and grandchildren. And we built a Sect that focuses on expanding knowledge and teaching to anyone who wants to learn.
"Do I think you're a shitty person for abandoning the person you thought of as your daughter because she wanted something different for her life? And for then leaving her child, who never insulted you, to live or die as the Fates determined? Yes. Is that what you want to know? Yes, Grandmaster, you were a shitty person. But I forgive you because if you hadn't been a shitty person, I would never have become the man I am today. And I like who I am." With a satisfying hmph, Wei WuXian closed his eyes again. "You're not worth the time and energy it would take for me to stay mad at you. I could only wish that you had left me alone even now. I needed you to watch over me when I was four. And maybe I needed you when I was seventeen. I don't need your excuses or apologies now…." He opened his eyes to see if she looked repentant, but he was alone except for the ghosts of his past.
A few hours later, as the false dawn was starting to light up the sky, Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi carefully fastened their phoenix robes around themselves with hands no longer trembling with old age. Lan WangJi tied a red ribbon around a half pony-tail in his husband's hair while Wei WuXian straightened Lan WangJi's forehead ribbon. "Lan Zhan… you don't have to follow me today. I know you're not tired like I am…. I know you haven't finished everything you wanted to do…. I know you've had arguments with your brother about not extending your life…. It's all right if you want to stay behind for a while. I will wait for you there."
"I lived without you once…. Only the belief that you would return to me kept me from following you, then." A tear slipped down his face. "You are why my heart beats, why my lungs inhale and exhale. You are the only reason I exist. Yes, my brother has argued for me to stay with him. He's not ready to say goodbye…. I could wish for more time with him as well, but...Wei Ying, with you gone… there is no reason for me to stay. None. I am content to leave with you, my love."
Wei Ying wiped his own tears away. "Then I will stay… for you, I will stay…."
"Wei Ying.… There is no shame in admitting you're tired. You've earned your rest." Lan WangJi held out his hand to his partner, "Will you walk beside me for the rest of our lives?"
"For the rest of all of our lives and for the eternity to follow. A thousand lifetimes with you will not be long enough." Hand in hand, on legs far steadier than they had been in years, the two men walked to a pagoda overlooking the lake to watch the sun rise.
Land WangJi sighed as he settled onto a bench. He strummed a few chords of their song, WangXian, on his guqin, then wrapped it and set it on the ground at his feet. "I never asked you how you were so sure you could control resentful energy. I think I would like to know, now."
Wei WuXian kissed his husband's age-spotted hand. "There is a price to pay to use resentful energy. It's just… The price I paid was different from everyone else." He sat still for a few minutes, composing his thoughts. "Resentful energy, Yin energy, requires you to give it an emotion: love. You could almost describe it as the love being sucked or eaten away, eventually leaving only hate behind. And with no love to balance out their hatred…."
"They go insane."
"Yes. But how could I feed it my love? I wanted to survive the Burial Mounds to get back to the people I loved…. What was the point in living if I could no longer love Shijie? Or Jiang Cheng? Or have my friendship with you? So I fed it my hate instead. When there was not enough hate, I fed it anger and frustration. I thought it might not be so bad being unable to hate…. I would rather have died than be unable to love…."
"But I saw you losing control…. Several times…."
"Do you remember ever trying to do something and being physically and mentally unable? There were many times after I escaped the Burial Mounds where I wanted to hate…. When I saw Wen Chou and Wen ZhuLiu… those monsters at the Nightless City…. Even the Jin and their allies murdering the Wen during the Purge. After Shijie died…. I wanted to hate them so much….
"Yin energy wants to be the fuel for hate… not be fed hate. The struggle you saw was me trying to feed it the emotion I very much wanted to feel…. It never got easier, of course…. By the time I stepped off that cliff, I had fed it so much of my hatred that when I woke up, there was not much left to feel…. The Yin energy was never content to be fed the wrong emotions…. It always wanted me to give in… to give up… Every day, every second after I learned how to use it… even now, the resentful energy calls to me to feed it my love."
Lan WangJi slid an arm around his husband's waist and squeezed. "I love you, Wei Ying."
"I love you, too, Lan Zhan. Thank you for everything."
Lan Zhan felt the body in his arms relax. "I will see you soon, my love." He leaned over to place one last kiss on his lover's mouth. He cuddled his husband's body closer and closed his eyes.
When Wen Ning found them, barely an hour after full dawn, the two men, bodies already cool to the touch, were slumped on the bench. HanGuang-Jun had one arm wrapped around his husband's waist, the other hand lightly holding onto Bichen. The Yiling Patriarch was resting his head on his husband's shoulder, Suibian and Chenqing lying across his lap. Both of them were smiling…. He bowed deeply. "Goodbye Master Wei, Master Lan."
Eighty years ago to the day, almost to this very hour, the cultivation world had celebrated the Yiling Patriarch's death. Today they would mourn.
Wen Ning removed the swords and flute from their hands and picked up the guqin. He and Song Lan would keep them safe until his Masters needed them again. "I'll see you soon," he promised.
Lan SiZhui met his Uncle Ning outside the cave at the Burial Mounds two weeks after the funerals. He looked haggard with grief. "I miss them already."
"It was what they wanted, A'Yuan."
Jin RuLan climbed up the remains of the path followed by Lan JinYi and OuYang ZiZhen. "You couldn't have cleared the way for us?" he complained.
"I wasn't advertising our presence here," Lan SiZhui smiled sadly at his friends.
Jin RuLan stomped his feet as if he was still the young boy first meeting his uncle on Dafan mountain. "Why? It's not fair!" He looked around, other than Wen Ning who was perpetually a teenager, they all looked like they were only in their early thirties. "There's no reason Uncle Wei and Uncle Lan had to die!" he shouted.
Lan SiZhui winced in pain. "They never told you?" When his friends all school their heads, he sighed. "I thought they would have told you, at least, A'Ling…. The Core transfer…. Baba and Jiang WanYin… their new Cores…." He wiped tears away. "They were unable to stop aging…. QingJie and my father… they decided to also not extend their lives." He sighed and wiped more tears away. "Father wouldn't live without Baba…. Baba held on as long as he could, but…." He angrily swiped at more tears. They were all wiping their faces… "Look at us. Baba will be so upset to see us all crying like babies."
OuYang ZiZhen laughed through his tears. "Senior Wei would be crying right along with us… but he'd be crying from laughing at us."
Lan SiZhui smiled weakly at his friend. "Did you bring it?"
OuYang ZiZhen pulled out paper dolls from a qiankun pouch: a pair of pretty servant girls and a brother and sister pair. "I was really happy to leave Yi City the first time. Why did you have to send me back there."
"Do you remember that congee?" Lan JingYi giggled. "Nasty stuff."
"He never did learn how to cook…. That was the first time I'd heard of that painted eye spell…. Do you remember how Senior Wei tricked us with that ghost?" Lan SiZhui smiled, the sadness fading.
"Oh yes!" Jin RuLan shivered. "Whatever happened to those souls? Was Song ZiChen ever able to restore them?"
"No," Wen Ning shook his head. "He let them go free maybe thirty or forty years ago…. Master Wei tried to help, but they were just too far gone. Hopefully, they will be resurrected."
OuYang ZiZhen held up a fistful of paper money, "Do you remember Senior Wei harassing HanGuang-Jun about burning paper money?"
Lan JingYi peered into the qiankun pouch. "How much did you get? It looks like a lot."
"I bought the entire town out."
"The entire town?" Jin RuLan looked ill.
"Yeah, why?"
Jin RuLan opened his own qiankun pouch to show that it, too, was full of paper money. "I bought out every store in Lanling City, too."
"Paper money! Bah! I brought something much better!" Lan JingYi boasted. He grabbed some rabbits from a wriggling bag. "HanGuang-Jun would never care about paper money, but they'd be happy knowing some of his rabbits were living here."
Lan SiZhui pulled out his own qiankun pouch and poured seeds into his hand. "I brought lotus seeds from Lotus Pier. I learned how to plant them, too…."
Jin RuLan wiped an inconvenient tear away. "His two greatest loves next to his children: HanGuang-Jun and lotus seeds."
"And wine," Wen Ning added, pointing to a hand cart filled with white porcelain jars. "I thought you might like to toast him."
The five men sat around a brazier far into the night, unceremoniously tossing paper money into it, and drinking Emperor's Smile. The night was full of 'do you remember's and 'I miss the times when we'. At last, Wen Ning was the only one still awake. He carefully poured the last jar of Emperor's Smile over the ashes in the brazier. He struggled to think of something profound to say. But nothing came to him that didn't sound stupid or trite.
In the end, he settled on a heartfelt, "Thank you, GeGe." Everything else had already been said.
The undead learned quickly that time passed for them differently than it did for the mortals around them. Although Wei WuXian's seventh generation descendants were already getting married and having children, it seemed to Wen Ning that only a few short years had passed when the cloud token lit up. And a few months later, the lotus blossom token changed its appearance, too.
The phoenix was reborn.
